


Alex vs the kryptonite bomb

by kiwi00



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-15
Updated: 2016-04-15
Packaged: 2018-06-02 07:39:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6557959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwi00/pseuds/kiwi00
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex becomes a kryptonite zombie. Things get sad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alex vs the kryptonite bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Considering how the last ep of Supergirl ended, I'm excited to see mind controlled!Alex fighting Kara and the delightful angst that comes with it. Since I haven't seen any fics about this yet, I figured I'd post this since it sort of (not really) fits. I think I wrote it right after the Black Mercy episode? 
> 
> If you're interested, I sometimes post to my tumblr at sidnfic.

Out of the plethora of atrocities that Maxwell Lord created to kill her sister, Alex hated the kryptonite bomb the most. Sure, the Frankensteined body of the poor woman languishing in the DEO basement was tugged at Alex’s conscience some nights. But Bizzaro was asleep and did not have a countdown clock ticking down the incredibly pissed off final 53 seconds of Alex’s life.

Lord was still in his cage at the DEO, and Alex took that opportunity to lead the team to infiltrate his lab and confiscate his technology. Unfortunately, the man left in charge to keep tinkering with the prototype was twice as cocky as Lord with half the intelligence.

Flinging the man’s head into the nearest wall was cathartic, but she still had an unstable bomb with a hair trigger to take care of. She ordered her team to evacuate the building 3 minutes ago, leaving her alone to flail at a device which looked like it was held together with duct tape and pipe cleaners.

With 7 seconds to go and a deep hatred for Maxwell Lord in her heart, she thought “Fuck it” and yanked out every wire she could get her hands on.

The earwig she tossed aside during the evac was screeching, presumably with Kara being overly (appropriately) worried. It was quickly drowned out by a blast big enough to disintegrate the Lord complex and its 3 sublevels.

…

When Kara made it to Lord Technologies, the dust cloud had just started to settle down. J'onn warned Kara away. She had landed beside him only because she physically couldn’t walk into the blast zone. She felt the kryptonite tugging at her from 3 blocks away, but kept moving forward, leaning against J'onn for support until he dropped her with the other agents at the edge of the crater.

J'onn spent 3 days scouring the rubble, but all he could find was debris, bomb shrapnel, and remnants of Lord’s failed experiments. No sign of Alex.

…

It was easy enough for Alex to sneak get to the DEO’s prisoner cells. Most people didn’t get the memo that she had died. Those that did didn’t seem too surprised to see Alex walking around. They’d all survived some weird shit the past year.

A quick swipe against the keypad opened the doors to Maxwell Lord’s cell.

“Agent Danvers, I’m glad to hear the rumors of your death were greatly exaggerated.” Lord turned on his side, not bothering to get up from the hard bench in his cell.

“You had kryptonite.” Her skin tinged green. “I won’t let you hurt Kara.”

He sat up, grin on his face. “You know, I’m glad we’re over the whole pretending I don’t know who Supergirl is thing. It was –“

Alex shot him once in the forehead and twice in the chest. She turned to make her escape before he hit the ground. She winced and grit her teeth as her skin seared green and her veins burned. Muscle memory lead her out of the facility as she held back convulsions.

…

“What do you mean she’s still out there? Then get her back!”

J’onn had reviewed the security footage for an hour. It took 5 minutes to figure out the tapes hadn’t been tampered with. It was another 30 before he believed it. The remainder of the time he spent trying to figure out what was going on before giving up and finally calling Kara.

“It’s not that easy. We still don’t know what happened. And if she doesn’t want to be found, she won’t be.”

“Why wouldn’t she want to be found? She’s hurt, alone, and obviously seriously messed up.” Kara waves to the video of Alex, wincing and stumbling down the hallway. “She needs us J’onn.”

“You don’t think I know that?” The silence was broken only by the cracking of the tablet in his death grip.

…

The DEO found her two days later in the center of Non’s hideout, surrounded by destroyed alien technology and 3 dead kryptonians. The agents – the same ones she had led into Lord Technologies - formed a perimeter around the bunker but keep well away.

J’onn found her unmoved from the center of the massacre: rod-straight, eyes empty and staring across the room.

“Alex, come back to the DEO. We can help you.” He inched towards her.

She craned her head at the sound, but remained unresponsive. At the touch of a tentative arm around her shoulders caused her to furrowed her brow and scowl.

“Alex,” he ventured, but he his thought died away when a burst of warmth surges and shoulders loosen under him.

“J’onn.” The words scratched as Alex said them. J’onn held up another Danvers sister as a voice, hoarse and crumbling, repeated “I’m sorry” over and over.

…

J'onn was silent. He had been since they got Alex back to the DEO. He sedated her as soon as she got into the van. He thought she nodded to him, understanding and accepting it. He thought she smiled at him in thanks. He also thought he was imagining things to make himself feel better.

The lab work revealed Alex’s blood was more kryptonite than hemoglobin at that point. But he could almost imagine Alex was sleeping, if he didn’t think about it too hard. If he didn’t look too close, he could ignore the radiation’s weight loss and thinning hair.

It’s her skin that got him. It was a sickly algae color. Not like a Martian’s. Not like his daughters’.  This wasn’t the first time he wondered if his girls would get along. Nor the first time he wondered when he started considering Alex and Kara his girls as well.

He was deep in thought, counting the ways he’s let down his loved ones, when Kara started talking.

“We have to help her,” she said. It was completely unnecessary, but she couldn’t help but fill the silence. It made her feel like she was doing something.

She paced around the room, a glass wall separating her from Alex and her kryptonite blood. “There has to be some way. She saved me from the black mercy. We can save her from this.”

Winn looked around. Everyone else eyes were focused either on Alex or firmly toward the ground. He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed, apparently the only one willing to voice the argument.

“Kara.” His voice was gentle, soothing. Patronizing. “The black mercy was different. Alex was hit with –“

Kara cut him off with a glare, her heat vision primed.

“We can save her.”

“Right,” he acquiesced before running another brain wave diagnostic.

…

It had been hours and they hadn’t made any more headway. Kara ushered the team away, telling them to rest. That she would stay with Alex for the night.

She slipped into the chair beside Alex, her customized hazmat suit squeaking against plastic.

“You should see this thing, Alex. It looks like a bee keeper suit, but less awesome.” Kara smiled weakly.

_“I hate bees!”_

_“That’s dumb, Kara. It’s not like they can hurt you.”_

_“But they tickle.” Kara pouted, looking at the beehive overtaking her favorite tree._

_Alex put her hand on her chin, something she saw her father do when he was deep in thought. “I have an idea.”_

Kara took Alex’s hand, feeling its weight, but not the warmth. “I can’t believe you got me to wear a bucket and two blankets for like a week, you jerk.”

She gingerly placed Alex’s hand back on the bed when she noticed the bruising and peeling of the paper-thin skin.

“You’d better wake up soon. The longer I sit here with you, the more I think Ms. Grant will fire me for real.” Kara sniffed, willing her tears to subside. “So don’t die. And don’t get me fired. Because I’ll be super mad at you.”

Alex’s monitors beeped their constant rhythm and lulled Kara to sleep.

…

Something jostled Kara, but she didn’t stir until her helmet was torn from her head.

“Huh?” Kara blinked awake to see Alex standing up, tearing IVs from her emerald arm.

Alex’s sunken eyes darted from Kara to the door, then focused back to Kara who was grabbing the chair back for support.

“Alex, calm down. We’re going to hel –“ she got a fist to the jaw.

Kara easily avoided the next swing, but she felt her strength flagging with each minute they were together. Alex hurled a surgical tray at Kara’s head, shattering glass behind her.

Kara recovered with a jab to Alex’s gut, then an uppercut. Alex dodged them easily. She kicked out Kara’s knee and elbowed her in the spine.

Kara absorbed the blows as well as possible, but even if the kryptonite weren’t sapping her energy, Alex really was the more experienced fighter. Eventually, she wa pinned against a wall, Alex’s hand against her neck.

“Please, Alex. Stop.” Kara choked her words out and clawed at the hand around her throat. “I need my sister.”

Alex’s voice strained and grated out the word. “Sister?” She loosened her grip and let Kara fall to the ground. Alex’s face blazed green before the tint disappeared.

Alex curled her hand around a piece of glass, neither one of them sure when she picked it up. Her arm shook as she held it up, eyes widening at green rivulets of blood falling to the floor.

Kara croaked, her voice hoarse. “Please come back. I love you.”

Alex’s hand stilled, and she smiled, finally fully in control since waking up. She looked Kara in the eyes and forced out another harsh, jagged word. “Protect.” Alex made a swift slash against the side of her neck and stumbled away from Kara.

“No, stop! What did you do?” Kara scrambled to her knees as quick as the kryptonite blood allowed her to move.

There was a burst of energy as Alex’s skin burned vibrant green. She snarled, brandishing the makeshift knife, making weak stabs in the air. Kara tossed it away easily and held pressure against Alex’s wound, ignoring the struggling beneath her. Kara screamed into the empty room for help, hoping someone heard her.

She registered footsteps stomp into the room, but focused on holding pressure. She focused on the warm body against her. On the shallow rise and fall of Alex’s chest. On the slowing arterial spray thrumming against her hand.

…

“She told me once, that pain is a part of life. That it makes us what we are. Made me a hero,” Kara said, her voice cold and mechanical. She was sitting on the floor of the exam room where Alex died. The DEO cleaned the blood and glass almost immediately, but Kara could still pick out the dents and scuff marks from the fight.

Dr. Henderson had told her the radiation poisoning had made her weak. If she didn’t have massive blood loss to contend with, she still would have died within a day. The throbbing in Kara’s knee made her doubt the claims of weakness and suspects Henderson was just saying that to make her – all of them – feel better.

“What a load of shit. She killed herself because of me and I’m a hero?”

J’onn sat down next to her, staring at the same spot Kara was. The spot where he found them just hours ago.

“She always wanted to protect you, even from herself.”

“There had to be another way. This wasn’t worth it. Alex, my parents, Astra. I can’t do this. I can’t keep losing my family.”

A thought flitted through Kara’s mind – maybe she should be crying right now. But she didn’t have it in her. Maybe she was still weak from the kryptonite, eschewing from the sunlamps to stay with Alex until they wheeled her away. She changed from her green-stained clothes to spare DEO-issued sweats at Vasquez’s insistence and had been sitting in the exam room ever since. She pushed that thought away and focused on the heaviness in her chest.

“She sacrificed herself because she believed in you. Don’t let that go to waste.” J’onn’s words came out as flat as they both felt.

He’ll have to talk to Eliza and wondered if she remembered the last time he spoke to her with similar bad news. He wondered how many times he could fail this family to whom he owed his life more times than he can count.

“What’s the point, though? What’s the point of any of this if she’s not here?”

J'onn gripped Kara’s hand in his. Kara didn’t move in for a hug. If they did that, they’d have to focus on the reason for the embrace and neither one of them could handle it being so tangible. He didn’t answer her question, either. Instead, he hums one of the lullabies he used to sing to his daughters and Mars and hopes that’s enough to get through the night.


End file.
